Beyond the Sunlab

"In Zanzibar and across the developing world, we found that 70% of medical equipment on average in hospitals is broken."

MED International is a nonprofit organization that works to maximize healthcare potential in developing countries by building on what resource-poor hospitals already have lots of: broken medical equipment. Offering inventory management software and short engineering courses, the MED International team has worked primarily in Zanzibar to date. Founder Jayson Marwaha ’14 speaks about translating technological skills into meaningful overseas impact.

Mnazi Mmoja Hospital, where MED International does most of its work in Zanzibar. The hospital, which is the island's largest, struggles with lack of equipment, unreliable access to water, and frequent power outages.

A workshop for hospital technicians at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital. Jayson says that although the broken medical equipment appears unsalvageable at first, most of the breakdown problems can be fixed with simple solutions.

Zanzibari hospital technicians working on the surgical light in an operating theater. MED International's 4-month course trains local employees to fix most hospital medical equipment without importing spare parts.

The team of hospital technicians Jayson worked with during his first summer in Zanzibar. In addition to offering the training course these workers took part in, MED International has created a software that helps hospitals inventory equipment and manage maintenance.

A rooftop view of Zanzibar City, where Mnazi Mmoja Hospital is located. MED International plans to expand to new sites soon, bringing tech-based solutions to resource poor hospitals around the world.

Tags

Related Stories

"My name is Gwendolene Mugodi and I am a writer and the founder of Paivapo Storytellers, a movement that aims to provide better access to local, good quality literature to the children in Zimbabwe--and eventually beyond. Our work would not be complete without the help of local artists like Abel Zvorufura who I met through the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. As two different artists we spent about a month and a half going back and forth on this book until we got to a place we were both happy with. I look forward to sharing that full book in a few months, but for now here's a little bit about Abel and why he does what he does."

Yelitsa Jean-Charles studies Illustration at RISD with a a concentration in Gender, Race & Sexuality. She identifies as a visual activist, and believes that artists have a responsibility as society’s image-makers. Her doll company and book series, Healthy Roots, combats internalized racism and colorism by getting to the root of the problem: altering beauty standards and cultviating self-love for young girls through education, diversity, and positive representation.

Mina is a Brown-RISD Social Innovation Fellow. She traveled to her home in Iran last summer and brought back a cultural souvenir: the book she wrote, Taste of Culture. She explores Iranian families, streets, stores and the stories and spirit embedded in the recipes of Iranian food. She hopes to start a conversation about the benefit of knowing cuisines of different cultures to connect societies.

This year's class of Brown-RISD Social Innovation Fellows have just begun their yearlong foray into the world of social entrepenuership. Check out their projects here.

Ria is a 2015 Social Innovation Fellow and co-founder of No Country for Women (NCFW), an internationally-recognized gender education initiative that aims to combat systemic gender-based discrimination in India. Ria and her co-founder, Shreena Thakore ’16, who grew up in India, were awarded the Projects for Peace fellowship and used this grant to launch the project in May of 2014. NCFW was set up to educate the people in India on gender, rape culture, and misogyny through a series of workshops and initiate informed discussions about social change.

I was inspired by Ria’s story because she was determined to start a conversation about an issue in a country that fights hard to keep such issues silent and hidden. We reflected on Ria’s experiences, her interactions with young people, most of whom had never thought about this obvious form of discrimination before, and her moments of self-doubt and extreme conviction.

Drew first became interested in filmmaking at an end of the year party at his kindergarten graduation, glued to the screen watching Star Wars while his friends ran around the yard screaming. His love of political science was ignited by his high school constitutional law class and exposure to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, all of which provided average citizens access to a better understanding of the impact of the law.

Now Drew is a junior at Brown, bringing together his interests by double concentrating in Political Science and Modern Culture and Media. He brings his passion for filmmaking and accessibility of policies outside of the classroom by making films with Brown Motion Pictures and working as the head University News editor for The Brown Daily Herald. Next semester, however, Drew is taking the spring off to work at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, Ireland, where he’ll be working in the consulate, handling public affairs issues, and hopefully creating multimedia projects while being in charge of their website.